AndrewC

Spoons is the exception. Think of them as the Walmart of pubs. Stacked high and sold as cheap as possible. At the moment there are 139 independent breweries inside the M25 alone. In a reversal of fortunes, Molson just sold off the Hop Stuff brewery and tap rooms to Salt brewing. The Hop Stuff brand will be retained and brewed somewhere. May of these smaller breweries are evolving from the cold and industrial tap rooms and picking up unloved pubs. (Big Smoke Brewing for example) There are also a number of community initiates to buy and run other pubs. (the Bevy in Brighton is a good example) The other thing is the massive growth of the micro-pub. In the boring borough alone there are currently 14 with plans for more. There will be a few that go under, get swallowed, or merge, but there are enough brewers of varying sizes to ensure the long term survival of craft and real ales. On that note, there are a number of larger business that have swallowed up breweries just to gain more product range to sell. A prime case of this is the Dutch firm Swinkels. A family company that has picked up several of the Netherland's smaller brewers but left them alone as they are more interested in gaining more product to sell. (de Molen, T'ij, Het Uiltje are their most recent purchases) Other small brewers sell out to protect themselves from the likes of inbev by joining other, more hospitable corporations. The case of Sleeman's and Unibroue selling to Sapporo to prevent a hostile inbev takeover is well known. CAMRA has basically become an anachronism. A slowly shrinking group of grumpy old men who would drink yak's p*ss if it was cask conditioned. Apart from their sponsorship of festivals, they really no longer serve any useful purpose. I won't go into all the petty politics of some many regional branches. In the US the big problem for smaller breweries is shelf space in supermarkets. The big boys put a lot of pressure and money to ensure they have the prime real estate in the store. A good example of this is Super-1 Foods. If you want anything other than mass produced fairy urine, you have to go to the middle of the aisles or the out of the way fridges to find the good stuff. At least the big one in Colombia Falls, MT has a "Made in Montana" section where local beers are promoted along with other products.

Hermes perchance?

Moaning all (just) from a chilly but sunny SW11. First time working away from home in 30 months. Feels a bit strange to be honest. Wandered through the house of fun but didn't see our correspondent. Perhaps he'd already departed home to the hill of strawberries. We've had a lot more Bexley parakeets about this autumn than normal. Generally they stay a bit further south towards Danson Park. Job hunting now stepped up a gear with a couple of potential companies showing interest. Other than that, fork all to say. Enjoy the day.

Hope. Yes I've stayed there as well. Hope the Coquihalla (or Trans Canada or Hope-Princeton) is open Hope the car makes it to Kamloops Hope the gas station actually has any gas Hope the toilet at the gas station is working The town is appropriately named. The Kettle Valley Railway. Long gone but not forgotten. I have a chunk of rail from there after they recovered what had been repurposed as guard rails along the old bits of Highway 5.

A bit more info on the reasoning behind Amazon's decision. Looks like in the EU the rate Visa can charge per transaction is capped. 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit cards. Brexit has liberated the UK from those horrible shackles and Visa can now go from 0.3% on credit cards to 1.5%, a 500% increase in transaction fees. Not to bleat on about Brexit but now that the legislated protections we once enjoyed are gone, there is nothing to stop the gouging. Transaction charges, mobile roaming charges, increased forex charges, cash point fees, etc.

I mean add more power clips connected to the existing power pack. The more the merrier as they say. This will increase the reliability without having to add soldered droppers to each section of track. It isn't the absolute best practice, but for a small layout with minimal track it should be sufficient.

Bus wiring is best on long stretches to help avoid voltage drop. On a layout like yours, as long as the wiring reaches every point reliably then don't worry about it. There are risks once you start ballasting and adding glue but if you can perhaps add one or 2 more power connectors as insurance.

Greetings all from the boring borough. No improvement in mood or anything else. Looks like no visit with the offspring this Christmas after all. Meh. Work is deteriorating fairly quickly to the point where I've alerted the sharks pimps recruiters to my availability. The thought of selling up and getting off plague island is looking more and more appealing. Life is full of hindsight. If we hadn't moved from Canada, chances are I'd be comfortably retired by now. Oh well, it's been an adventure. Enjoy the day.

Not sure if it is still the case but once upon a time if you purchased something with Amex the seller didn't get reimbursed until you paid the card statement. One of the main reasons so many smaller businesses don't touch it. My previous employer went from Barclay's Visa to Amex for our expenses card last year and promptly got a major roasting for it, as over half the hotels and restaurants on their preferred supplier list wouldn't accept it.

In related news. NatWest changed over all their credit cards from Visa to MC last year. Now they are dumping Visa for their debit cards as well. There were a few shops in the Netherlands last month that wouldn't take Visa as well. I have a feeling this is likely to force them to climb down on their fees somewhat.

Moaning all from the boring borough. Our washer used to be by the back door which was some sort of utility area. When we remodelled, one of the bedrooms became a large bathroom. That gave us space for jetted tub, separate shower, room for SWMBO's yoga mat, and exercise space. It also left enough area for the washer and dryer. (stacked) These are separated from the rest of the room with a partial glass block wall and it has RP66 sockets which are far enough from the sink & tub to have been approved by building control, council's planning, and the inspecting electrician. Having the washing on the first floor is a more modern Canadian thing. Something that was built into the house we built back in the late 90s. It also frees up more cupboard space in the kitchen. condolences to @grandadbob

One thing that SecOps people keep harping on about is to beware of social engineering. People are generally easily manipulated into giving out personal data on social media sites. All these stupid things like take the year you were born and add 50 bla bla bla. They are now 1/3 of the way to getting your birthdate information. Next you will see a horoscope thing which will harvest your month..... Same with cars. "What year did you pass your driver's test and what did you drive". Things like school, or pet can also be harvested by these methods. There are hundreds of these bloody things all over fecesbook and twatter. As for email providers, never ever use your internet provider's email service. They are without exception, crap. If you can, host your own or use something like Apple or Microsoft outlook. These are designed for enterprise and corporate use, so have far better checks and security in place than Talk Talk or Sky. Multi-factor authentication is now a must as well. That slows down any evil doer in that you have a second check when logging in. It can be a pain in the nether regions but it is worth it. Lastly, change any and all critical passwords on a regular basis. Even if you have "myp@55wurd-01" and just increment the digits, it lowers your probability of being hacked.

I've wondered why the Brussels version isn't called Moule or the Dutch version Frite.

Greetings from the boring borough. Work: <censored> Life: <censored> Everything else: <censored> That's about it.

Yep it was a e320 both ways. The ride out was fine but coming back was worse than a 376 going through the old pointwork at London Bridge. At one point my drink bottle bounced off the table completely. The seating is crap and little better than the ones fitted to Thameslink's white worms. Much prefer the THALYS old TGV sets with the original seats. However, I understand these are now being replaced in the coming years as well as a full revamp of the existing sets in the form of their new "Ruby" initiative. Good moaning all from the boring borough. Back to reality and the holiday is now a fading memory. Either I'm having a late mid life crisis, or an early need to retire for my sanity moment. I find no challenge to the work and no enjoyment in anything at all anymore. Time to move on? Time to move back? Time for a total change over? I've basically restarted my life 3 times in the past and feel a 4th is needed but just don't have the energy or motivation. I don't even know if it is doable. Oh well. Back to the grind and more soul destroying meetings. Enjoy your day.

Greetings all. Back in the boring borough after a week away. Most of the time was quite enjoyable. Too much food, too much beer. <grumble zone> All the hassle and crap to follow the rules seems to be a waste of time and money. Arrived in Belgium last Wednesday, no scan of vaccine pass, nothing more than a fast visual check of the passenger locator form. We knew we'd have to take daily tests in the Netherlands as they didn't accept the UK vaccination pass. That changed on Friday, supposedly. Good thing we didn't cancel the test as it still wasn't working by late Friday night. Saturday though it seemed to work ok providing we used the French AntiCovid app instead of the NHS one. The UK locator form is built on the standard UK gov platform and as such is a nightmare to fill in if using a mobile device. After all of that effort, it was never checked at either end of the trip home. We could have saved the cost of the tests. The day 2 tests arrived, so tomorrow will be another shove a stick up the nose effort. At least it is now a diy flow test @ £20 instead of the £80 + mail in ones you needed 2 weeks ago. Eurostar seem to have been taking lessons from the crappier airlines. Yesterday's trip was quite possibly the worst one ever. Brussels Eurostar has been transformed into an even darker, more depressing, crowed space with no café or table space in order to give over 50% of the area to an overly large but mostly empty (in terms of floor space) duty free shop. Note: buy your sandwiches & drinks in the Carrefour before going through security. Same packaging, 2.50€ cheaper than the duty free shop. Captive audience, I can see why they closed the café. b*stards. The train itself seemed to be missing any form of suspension. Our carriage bottomed out several times and even at slower speeds there was a lot of hunting & bouncing. Back to work today to find out I've been extended on one client's project until April. Shame the muppets forgot to extend my login and other credentials. Today I will be mostly thumb twiddling and clearing my inbox of merde. </grumble zone> Enjoy the day.

Good moaning all from a wet & Windy Brussel. Day 6 of our 7 day “use up all your covid cancellation hotel & train vouchers before they expire” holiday. Too much walking for my knees, too much food, too much beer. Today will likely be more of the same.

He w@nks very highwy in Wome you know.

If you BBQ, then dirty courgette is a nice side dish. Split lengthways, rub with olive oil and SPG (salt pepper garlic), and lay them skin down directly on the coals until they start to blister. yum.

Greetings all from the boring borough. A 2 day work week, which is likely to feel like a month. <sigh> 1000 legs and 3 front teeth sounds more like a bingo hall to me. Boring mundane life crap to skip: New cat sitter came around. Nice lady from just a couple of streets away. She has 20 of her own. (breeder) The boys took to her fairly quickly. Managed to power wash the decking around the shed. Today my plan is the first coat of grit impregnated stain to stop it from being so slippy in winter. Although the amount of moss and other crap that was blown away has already made a big improvement. Once all this is done I can assemble SWMBO's Vege-pod raised beds. Talk of tape delay takes me back to one of my first jobs in the TV industry. Canada has 6 timezones, well 5 1/2 really which chop and change with daylight time, etc. Way back when, the 2 tv networks (CTV and CBC) would broadcast their programmes via microwave relay based on Atlantic time for when the show should be broadcast. Each timezone had a tape delay centre which contained a bank of 2" quad video tape machines. The delay centres would record the programme when it was transmitted and play it back to the local stations again via microwave relay at the appropriate time. This also allowed the master control at each station to insert local advertising as well. Of course this didn't include live broadcasts such as sports. It also led to the Canadian joke that the world will end tomorrow at 10 o clock. 10:30 in Newfoundland. It was a pretty dull job but at least I could watch late night programming at 9pm. Time for coffee, book our return covid tests, and fill out the forms. Enjoy the day.

You might want to take a look at ServiceNow. There is a critical shortage of people with skills in that platform. Some companies are even cross training IT people from other disciplines. We just hired a SAP specialist. SN also have a learning portal with loads of free training & micro-certifications. Basically it is a big-ass cloud platform on top of a MySQL backend.

<insert lame Elton John Rocket Man pun here>

2 different companies and not even close to the same beer. The American Bud is rice slurry, food colouring, and added grain alcohol to bring the abv to 5%. It really is the McDonald's of beers. Factory produced to an easily reproducible level. The only commonality with Budvar is the never ending legal battles over the name.

I'll second the idea of bus over hgv. A good friend used to drive but injured his back & hip. He had difficulty in getting into the cab, hooking up the trailer, and even basic inspections. He's doing school bus runs now. Sleeps in his own bed every night, no aggro, and no pain while working.

Check with the Swiss regarding internal testing. It is what we have to do next week in the Netherlands in order to go into bars, restaurants, or museums.